Breadboards are used for setting up optical experiments or other laboratory experiments in which the position and alignment of the components mounted on the breadboard must be extremely accurate since even small position inaccuracies or geometrical displacements caused by vibrations or thermal strain in the breadboard can lead to a complete failure of an experiment. The conventional breadboards generally consist of two parallel steel panels with a steel honeycomb structure being sandwiched between the steel panels. The honeycomb structure provides a high mechanical stiffness thereby avoiding bending of the breadboard and a misalignment of the components on the breadboard.
One disadvantage of the conventional steel breadboards mentioned above is the high weight.
A further disadvantage of the conventional breadboards is the unsatisfying accuracy with regard to the positioning of the optical components which are mounted onto the breadboard. The unsatisfying accuracy is caused by the typically applied manufacturing technologies and by thermal expansion of the steel panels and the steel honeycomb structure. Further, an optical table is disclosed in ROHLOFF, Ralf Rainer et al.: “CFRP structure for the LBT instrument LINC-NIRVANA”, Optomechanical Technologies for Astronomy, 2006, Vol. 6273, 1-12. The optical table disclosed in this publication comprises two parallel flat panels made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP) and an Aluminum honeycomb structure sandwiched between the CFRP panels. However, the Aluminum honeycomb structure also results in a high weight of the optical table.